Hello I've not been on for a while, but have a question and thought you good people will probably have the answer.
I have four 'homeguard' seeded potatoes planted latter half of April. I've been banking them up. And watering from my waterbutt. The person who gave them to me has already harvested hers. She planted them about a week before me. Mine haven't flowered/hers have. My question is, does it matter whether they flower or not?
Some varieties don't "flower" at all... but Homeguard does... I'd wait personally... :-\
Yes, I would wait. I am eating my earlies but they were planted early March! So I would give it to mid-July at least.
Mine have not flowered. In fact the plants have started to look a bit sick But I have been digging them up and getting about 15 small spuds per plant so very pleased with them.
I lifted one and found the spuds were rather small so left them another week and now they have fattened nicely. I have lots more spuds on the way so it did not matter to me if they were rather small. But I planted mine the back end of March they were well up for the Easter Bank holiday.
I'd have a quick firtle and see what you can find.
We don't wait for ours to flower - we've been harvesting ours for over a month now - but did plant early march.
Alison
A few years ago I went to a Potato day in Hampshire and bought loads of old heritage varieties.
Proudly showing them to a nice old boy on our plot, expecting him to be all nostalgic about the good old varieties met with a shock.
'I havent seen those for years, my father used to grow them, they were absolute rubbish used to get blight at the drop of a hat, tasted rubbish, give me the modern stuff any day'.
Crushed I planted the spuds, and even more crushed when he proved to be correct.
We love the flavour of homeguard.
Good job we're not all the same :)
Alison
Quote from: Alimo on June 30, 2011, 12:52:20
Good job we're not all the same :)
Amen to that, if we were then Homeguard would still be popular :D
I quite enjoy growing Heritage varieties of varous things but frequently they only get one growing..... you will find old things that taste great and were dropped for reasons not to do with anything that we care about, equally sometimes they are pretty overwhelming.... Lumper was by all accounts a gorgeous tasting and massively productive potato.... but it was horribly sensitive to blight.... I'd love to grow it to compare with modern varieties though..... Also, a century ago there were six Fir Apple potatoes being listed in the seed catalogues.... but one of them described PFA as being "the best behaved and most regularly shaped Fir Apple".... if that spreading thug and hand-shaped knobbly tuber warrants that description what can the others have been like?..
This years heritage spuds are : Vitelotte, Negrsse, Forty-Fold, Yetholms Gypsy, Highland Burgundy Red, Salad Blue and I guess PFA counts....that said though, I'm not averse to new varieties either, Sarpo Mira, Sarpo Axona, Setanta and Mayan Gold are all in there, as are an as yet not commercially released cross between Mayan Gold and PFA, and a bunch of true potato seedlings (and therefore a dozen new varieties of their own rights), children of Ratte and Russian Blue.... I make a total of 21 varieties, most I've got of any one variety is the 20 Sarpo Mira, mostly it's 5 to 10, there's only one Vitelotte and 3 Negresse....
I suppose it also depends on the soil. I am enjoying Homeguard good flavour. Reasonably productive.
But I also have some heritage varities like Chris tend to go for 5. Yetholme Gipsy, Highland Burgandy Red, Shetland Black 10 becuase I like taste last year. Mayan Gold 20 could not get enough of them last year and Yukon Gold 5 and several others. Also got a mystery potato put 5 on the packet for paying but forgot to put the variety, it has rather attractive purple/blue spuds so it might be Edzell Blue.
I grew fell in love with taste of linzer delicattesse last year but that apparently gets some lurge and was not available anywhere I could find this year. Had a few volunteers and they certainly got something so a very small crop indeed. Doesn't seem to taste so good this year. Perhaps the weather also influences things. Still so very dry.
Quote from: Digeroo on July 03, 2011, 06:05:36
I suppose it also depends on the soil. I am enjoying Homeguard good flavour. Reasonably productive.
But I also have some heritage varities like Chris tend to go for 5. Yetholme Gipsy, Highland Burgandy Red, Shetland Black 10 becuase I like taste last year. Mayan Gold 20 could not get enough of them last year and Yukon Gold 5 and several others. Also got a mystery potato put 5 on the packet for paying but forgot to put the variety, it has rather attractive purple/blue spuds so it might be Edzell Blue.
I grew fell in love with taste of linzer delicattesse last year but that apparently gets some lurge and was not available anywhere I could find this year. Had a few volunteers and they certainly got something so a very small crop indeed. Doesn't seem to taste so good this year. Perhaps the weather also influences things. Still so very dry.
COuld the blue be an Edgecote Purple?.... don't remember there being any Edzell's at the potato day in Swindon.... Linzer D gets blight badly IIRC
Could be the Edgecote but that does not ring any bells, also got potatoes at Garden Organic.
Just finishing the last of my Home Guard which is a pity since I have been enjoying them.
I must say we found Homeguard to be a rather lackluste potato, but each to his own taste. Why not have a little expermental dig to see whether they are ready. We are digging up our Charlotte now and even a few Maris Piper though they could do with a little more time to get bigger. The Charlotte are lovely and haven't flowered at all. busy_lizzie
as my pots didn't go in til 1st April i left til now to dig some so yesterday i had a quick fertile but they were the size of a small baking spud right disappointed as i was hoping for some small melt in your mouth size ones i knew i might mixed the variety's up so i dug in the next row brought both variety's home in one bag ended up cooking the two to gether one lot was still hard when the other was cooked and looked very watery even when not fully cooked so ended in the bin as they the hard ones did not taste very nice both lots were good sized spuds so :o :( what caused the wateryness and hardness
I think that the taste of a potato depends on the soil and the weather. I have just dug up some volunteer vanessa. Did not think much of them last year rather tasteless and watery. Just dug up some nice sized spuds and they were very nice. Soil the same but they had had some leaf mould and it has been very dry so not much chance of a watery potato so far this year.
both lots were a good size but one lot was vile like i said hard and they looked if they got frosted but there was no frost down here since planting the others right next door( i did one row of7 sorts)was good but i mixed the variety's up bringing back home
Quote from: brown thumb on July 05, 2011, 09:40:22
as my pots didn't go in til 1st April i left til now to dig some so yesterday i had a quick fertile but they were the size of a small baking spud right disappointed as i was hoping for some small melt in your mouth size ones i knew i might mixed the variety's up so i dug in the next row brought both variety's home in one bag ended up cooking the two to gether one lot was still hard when the other was cooked and looked very watery even when not fully cooked so ended in the bin as they the hard ones did not taste very nice both lots were good sized spuds so :o :( what caused the wateryness and hardness
There's a commercial variety called Harmony that fits that descriptuion.... gives big even spuds that look really good but it's disgusting for all cooking methods IMHO, dreadful baked, boiled for mash or chipped adn given it's wierd watery flesh (which stays hard and watery) I can't see it roasting well either... IIRC there's another one equally foul called Saxon...
chrisc
Our homeguard on plot two are bakers/chippers, we took them from plot one as newies ;D
Who knows? But when you try stuff you always need a back up. There is a lot to be said for Charlotte, well watered with a box of poundland growmore in each trench.
Edited to add: Sarpo Mira and the like are my villains: great yield of revolting spuds.
thank goodness i only grew 8 plants of this one i was trying out variety's grew 7 diffrent ones trouble is i mixed the labels up when planting :'(but know these could have only come from the 2rows i dug yesterday
Quote from: DenbyVisitor on July 05, 2011, 17:24:57
Who knows? But when you try stuff you always need a back up. There is a lot to be said for Charlotte, well watered with a box of poundland growmore in each trench.
Edited to add: Sarpo Mira and the like are my villains: great yield of revolting spuds.
That's wierd... on my last years attempts both the Sarpo strains gave good spuds.... Axona especially was good baked but they're both aa bit odd chipped, you have to cook at a lower temperature for a while cos they brown up too easily.... Neither of them boil/mash worth a d**n though....
its strange how some variety's differ in different soils and regions :-[ i always thought one make of spud taste the same where ever it grew
Quote from: brown thumb on July 06, 2011, 14:11:43
its strange how some variety's differ in different soils and regions :-[ i always thought one make of spud taste the same where ever it grew
HTe more commercial varieties generally do, the older ones vary with soil a lot more.... remember that they nearly all started out as local landraces.... It's a reason to grow some TPS, you never know what you might get.....
chrisc
Even so, it might be the soil, my plot seems to be a landfill in a former clay pit. But the sarpos I grew 2 years ago (mira and axona) were horrible, no flavour or texture at all and the first one I tried to bake exploded in the oven in spite of being on a skewer, ugh. I can see whey they were developed, to feed the starving masses perhaps, but for hobby growers no way. JMO though.
CC1966 in spite of our different results on the sarpos I am giving setanta a go this year on your recommendation (at least I think it was you), got 10 tubers from a seller on ebay and it will be interesting to see how we go.
But still think Charlotte is a good default. Lovely spud as an early or MC.
Interestingly, this is what it says about Sarpo Mira on the Alan Romans website - so perhaps I was just doing it wrong:
Like Axona, Mira is extremely blight and virus resistant - the most resistant variety known at the moment. They are both on the floury side of general purpose and effort is needed to stop the tubers becoming too big and starchy - cut the foliage off in say August to get good general purpose tubers. These varieties are not really late maincrops - they grow continuously all season unlike classic late maincrops which are day length sensitive and don't bulk up until late summer. They require a different mind set - instead of working hard to get the most from them, as with other varieties, it is necessary to monitor them and stop them at the point when the tubers are right for you. Both varieties have some slug resistance (but long growing period can mask this) and both store exceptionally well. Mira is drought tolerant. Peasant survival food!
We live in Cheshire & wanted to grow 'Cheshire' potatoes. We asked a farmer which to buy as we bought ours from him before we got the lotty. OH, bless him, thought we could just buy Cheshire seed potatoes, I think it was rocket. We planted them along with Swift & the rocket were horrible. So different soils do make a difference. Ours is a very sandy soil. Having said that, the ones from the farmer didn't taste as good as our own grown ones, we bought a few to compare.
Quote from: grannyjanny on July 07, 2011, 17:13:30
We live in Cheshire & wanted to grow 'Cheshire' potatoes. We asked a farmer which to buy as we bought ours from him before we got the lotty. OH, bless him, thought we could just buy Cheshire seed potatoes, I think it was rocket. We planted them along with Swift & the rocket were horrible. So different soils do make a difference. Ours is a very sandy soil. Having said that, the ones from the farmer didn't taste as good as our own grown ones, we bought a few to compare.
Rocket isn't the tastiest spud, it's really grown for its exceptionally fast cropping.... I'd say you only really want half a dozen of them for ultra first earlies.... start them off in January in the GH and you'll be tipping them out at the end of March/start of April, start some lady Christls adn Pentalnd Javelin off at the same time adn they'll come out in that order, LC adn PJ are both a lot tastier than Rocket (TBH there are wallpaper pastes that are tastier than Rocket grown on some soils). LC is one of the nicest tasting earlies going and makes a great potato salad, and PJ bakes as well as all the rest of the Pentlands, so I tend to put a half dozen smallish ones in the microwave for 3 minutes, then run them onto skewers adn into the oven for 20 minutes or so at 200 degrees.... mini baked potato kebabs.....
Well very interesting comments, also making me laugh regarding 'vile, disgusting etc'. I had a look last week and the potatoes were tiny. Still no flowers, but have decided to leave them until about the end of August.